Here are the 30 most popular free online university courses and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) starting in April 2022, based on Class Central learners’ activity.

If these courses don’t interest you, either browse Class Central’s extensive catalog of close to 60,000 online courses via our subjects page, or have a look at our thematic collections:

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Most Popular Courses

Tropical Forest Landscapes 101: Conservation & Restoration
Yale University via Coursera
Conserving and restoring tropical forest landscapes offers an opportunity to address pressing environmental and social challenges. Effective conservation and restoration initiatives support multiple objectives, including ecosystem functioning, climate change mitigation and adaptation, food security, and economic growth.

Applied Calculus with Python
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
This course is designed for the Python programmer who wants to develop the foundations of Calculus to help solve challenging problems as well as the student of mathematics looking to learn the theory and numerical techniques of applied calculus implemented in Python. By the end of this course, you will have learned how to apply essential calculus concepts to develop robust Python applications that solve a variety of real-world challenges.

Introduction to Cybersecurity Essentials
IBM via Coursera
Today’s data-driven and globally connected world data often flows freely between users, organizations, and businesses. Data has real value, and cyber criminals recognize this fact. The steady rise in cybercrime is driving up the demand for cybersecurity experts to protect and defend an organization against attack. When you’re ready to enter the world of cybersecurity, you need job-ready skills. Accreditations, such as IBM Certificates and the CompTIA Network+ certification, attest to your skills, helping you gain a competitive advantage.

Nuts and Bolts of U.S. Immigration Law
University of Pennsylvania via Coursera
This course begins by exploring short term entry and long term entry into the United States. We will cover the various means of short term entry and long term entry, as well as the general application processes. We will also examine exclusion and deportation in the United States. In particular, we will discuss how and why individuals may not be admitted into the United States and possible reasons for deportation or removal. Lastly, we will cover the process of how to become a United States citizen and the various requirements for naturalization.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine Teach-Out
University of Michigan via Coursera
The armed conflict in Ukraine first started in the beginning of 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Over the past eight years, there has been ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, with regular shelling and skirmishes occurring along Russian and Ukrainian borders in the eastern part of the country.

Technology of Intelligent and Integrated Energy Systems
Delft University of Technology via edX
Design an integrated energy system recognizing the role of intelligent use of various technologies including renewable energy sources, energy storage, electric vehicles, thermal systems and interconnected multi-carrier grids.

Training and Practicing in English Public Speaking
Shanghai Jiao Tong University via Coursera
This is a course which improves your comprehensive skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and thinking in English. After finishing the course, the learners will be comfortable speaking in English, be it everyday life, study, or work.

How to Jumpstart Your Hidden Creative Genius
Michigan State University via Coursera
Despite what you may think, there is evidence that everyone has the capacity to think creatively. This course will teach you to be much less predictable in your thinking and have the confidence and ability to generate unique, workable ideas to solve complex problems.

Introduction to Multinational and Cross-Cultural Teams
University of California, Davis via Coursera
Do you (or do you want to) work on a multinational team? Do you want to become a manager or improve your current management style to get better results? Are you unsure if culture is impacting your ability to communicate and collaborate? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this course – and its associated specialization – is for you!

Influencing the Organisation
Queen Mary University of London via Coursera
In this course, you will look at how you can effectively manage stakeholders and industry/organisational politics, whilst successfully mobilising people.

Employment Contracts
University of Pennsylvania via Coursera
The employment relationship is one of the foundations upon which modern society and the greater economy is built, but the nature of this relationship can be both complex and confusing. This course seeks to demystify the ways that U.S. contract law principles govern the fundamental relationship between employers and employees.

Big Data Analysis with Scala and Spark (Scala 2 version)
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne via Coursera
In this course, we’ll see how the data parallel paradigm can be extended to the distributed case, using Spark throughout. We’ll cover Spark’s programming model in detail, being careful to understand how and when it differs from familiar programming models, like shared-memory parallel collections or sequential Scala collections.

Data mining of Clinical Databases
University of Glasgow via Coursera
This course will introduce MIMIC-III, which is the largest publicly Electronic Health Record (EHR) database available to benchmark machine learning algorithms. In particular, you will learn about the design of this relational database, what tools are available to query, extract and visualise descriptive analytics.

Finance of Mergers and Acquisitions: Valuation and Pricing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Coursera
This course teaches how to value and price M&A deals and to choose the optimal financing mix for an M&A deal. The course focuses on all the major types of M&A deals including strategic M&A, private equity leveraged buyouts (LBOs), and restructuring deals such as spinoffs and asset transfers.

Responsible Conduct of Research
Utrecht University via Coursera
As a PhD student in academia, there are difficulties you may encounter in the area of integrity, such as power relations and issues around social safety, authorship, intellectual property, and ensuring academic quality. How can you properly determine the order of authorship? In what way can social safety be improved? How do others deal with integrity issues?

Deep learning in Electronic Health Records
University of Glasgow via Coursera
Overview of the main principles of Deep Learning along with common architectures. Formulate the problem for time-series classification and apply it to vital signals such as ECG. Apply these approaches to formulate clinical prediction benchmarks derived from information available in MIMIC-III database.

Innovation Demystified: Tools for Finance Professionals
Association of International Certified Professional Accountants via Coursera
Introducing the tools, methods and mindset that will enable contributions to any organizations’ innovation agenda, this course illustrates practical techniques specific to driving innovation. You will learn how and why leading, measuring, and executing innovation takes tools, methods and mindset different from those used to operate an established business.

Community Engagement in Research and Population Health
University of Rochester via Coursera
As you will learn, the health system is in the midst of a critical transition. The current system is not sustainable with escalating costs, mediocre health outcomes, and unacceptable disparities. This course will first discuss the current system, including definitions of population, health and social determinants of health, and how the US compares to other countries on the triple aim –lower cost, better care, and a healthier population.

The Econometrics of Time Series Data
Queen Mary University of London via Coursera
In this course, you will look at models and approaches that are designed to deal with challenges raised by time series data. The discussion covers the motivation for the use of particular models and the description of the characteristics of time series data, with a special attention raised to the potential memory.

Uncertainty and Research
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
This course teaches the fundamentals of scientific research. We approach the research process as a means of systematically reducing uncertainty and demonstrate how conducting a scientific investigation can be posed as an exercise in Bayesian uncertainty quantification.

Unsupervised Algorithms in Machine Learning
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
In this course, we will learn selected unsupervised learning methods for dimensionality reduction, clustering, finding latent features, and application cases such as recommender system with hands-on examples of product recommendation algorithms.

Introduction to the Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST)
New York University (NYU) via Coursera
This course will show you how to use the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) to: streamline interventions by eliminating inactive components; identify the combination of components that offers the greatest effectiveness without exceeding a defined implementation budget; develop interventions for immediate scalability; look inside the “black box” to understand which intervention components work and which do not; and improve interventions programmatically over time.

Easy Vlogging – Making Interactive Self-introduction Videos
Hong Kong Polytechnic University via edX
Learn how to create an engaging self-introduction video and make the strongest possible first impression to your audience. Gain both practices and technical skills in the use of camera, lighting, sound recording, video editing and more in the video production process.

Technology and Product Planning
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Through the voices of start-up and product leaders this course makes transparent what it takes to build a digital health product for healthcare customers large and small. It outlines the planning, resources, process, and team needed to get a healthcare technology product from idea to operational at a customer site.

Machine Learning Basics
Sungkyunkwan University via Coursera
In this course, you will: understand the basic concepts of machine learning; understand a typical memory-based method, the K nearest neighbor method; understand linear regression; and understand model analysis.

Black Agricultural Solutions to Food Apartheid: A Teach-Out
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Black Agricultural Solutions to Food Apartheid is a series where we dive deep into the historical, ancestral, and spiritual connections that Black people have to land and agriculture. Throughout this course, we encourage participants to learn about their ancestral foodways, agrarian practices, and spiritual connections. These sessions share wisdom and highlight the importance of food sovereignty, rebuilding community, and land based living.

Fundamentals of Software Architecture for Big Data
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
The course is intended for individuals looking to understand the basics of software engineering as they relate to building large software systems that leverage big data. You will be introduced to software engineering concepts necessary to build and scale large, data intensive, distributed systems. Starting with software engineering best practices and loosely coupled, highly cohesive data microservices, the course takes you through the evolution of a distributed system over time.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
IBM via Coursera
You will begin by learning Infrastructure as Code and its benefits. You’ll also explore different IaC Platforms and Tools. You will learn about Continuous Integration, its benefits, and some popular tools that are used for Continuous Integration.

The Structured Query Language (SQL)
University of Colorado Boulder via Coursera
In this course you will learn all about the Structured Query Language (“SQL”.) We will review the origins of the language and its conceptual foundations. But primarily, we will focus on learning all the standard SQL commands, their syntax, and how to use these commands to conduct analysis of the data within a relational database.

Global Sodium Reduction Strategies
Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
This course will help guide policy makers, advocates, and program managers as they design, plan, and implement sodium reduction interventions to protect public health. We invite you to see what interventions have been proven at scale, what shows promise, and what lessons have been learned along the way from the implementation of sodium reduction strategies all around the globe.

Defining Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Organizations
Rice University via Coursera
Defining Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Organizations is the first course of a four-course series. This course introduces the core definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion and reasons why these efforts can often fail. We will also explore the elements for making the case for diversity and the concept of DE&I maturation where learners can assess their organization’s activities to determine where it may place on the DE&I continuum.

Forecasting Financial Statements & Valuation for Accountants
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign via Coursera
The objective of this course is to provide you with the knowledge and skills necessary to analyze, interpret, understand and use financial information to make informed decisions. We will discuss financial reporting from a user’s perspective, use a variety of tools to break apart financial reports into meaningful units for analysis, forecast financial statements, and value a firm.